#the next chapter is decisive
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kuyenshino · 5 months ago
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Just a friendly reminder that even when there are some theories going on about Asa and Yoru merging together into one, they are currently NOT the same individual, even when Asa's feelings for Denji are permeating into Yoru somehow (well they share the same body and brain).
Clearly Yoru gives a damn about Asa, including her body autonomy (and you can say that Asa was sa'd by Yoru too bc she didn't consent). I'm saying this bc a lot of ppl thought Asa and Yoru were acting friendly lately... But that's just because of what Famine said to them about Chainsaw man.
The reality is that Yoru doesn't really care about Asa's feelings (and Denji's by extent). She wants to fight with Chainsaw man and doesn't care about anything else. She's a devil after all.
What happened in this chapter can potentially not only destroy whatever genuine relationship Asa and Denji could have, but Asa and Yoru's alliance too.
I think we will see some seeds of a conflict inside between Asa and Yoru once the fragile trust they developed has been broken. This internal conflict can be decisive for the climax of the manga.
Of course, Denji is a SA victim here, but Asa is one too! So I wonder if Asa will have an emotional breakdown and reveal the truth about her and Yoru at some point... Or if shit will get even worse and nothing will be cleared up, because Asa will close herself off from Denji and Denji will distrust her even more.
Anyway, to be honest, I just don't see any point of still keeping Yoru as a secret anymore, since what happened in this chapter is probably the climax of their misunderstandings and bad communication, and that will define their relationship from now on. In my opinion, it would be more interesting, from a narrative point of view, if Denji will finally have to deal with the whole picture about Asa, "her mood swings" and all it implies for their interactions: the ugly, the bad and the good... And what HE will decide about that. Or maybe its just my wish for Denji to finally have some kind of iniciative or consent about his own life.
I'm very anxious of what will happen next chapters because Fujimoto is such an unpredictable author...
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starry-bi-sky · 20 days ago
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mmmmmm read a disciple shen yuan/shizun luo binghe fanfic about two days ago where the first chapter was the Immortal Conference arc, and SQQ was the one who had to be pushed into the abyss (he was still the villain) except Luo Binghe was refusing and was like, lowkey losing his mind about SQQ being so close to the edge. SQQ ended up having to be the one to fall in himself because of the system's punishment system. The rest of the fic is leading up to that moment. But like, MMM i've been obsessively thinking about that first chapter for DAYS ever since.
now i've been in svsss for a grand total of *checks watch* a week. but god obsessed with that. I want to write/read a fic where disciple SQQ goes a little nuts down there. Like keep all of the things that make SQQ, SQQ, but just. Throw in a little bit more trauma in there. A little bit of a mental break. Let him go a little nuts as a treat. Just a tad unhinged. I wanna see him go, just a little, "god fuck it, i've tried so hard to change this shitty story's outcome and it feels like everything i've done has been for nothing. I'm going to die in this world no matter what I do, I've been doomed from the start, so might as well die the way I want to." and he just, breaks a little! Under all the stress.
He still retains the traits that makes shen yuan, shen yuan, like his overwhelming kindness. But he's just! yk. A little less patient. Paranoid. Jumpy. Colder. A little more aloof and closed off. A little more Shen Jiu. He's no asshole child abuser, but he was a Number One Hater in his past life and he's leaning into that old habit a little more now.
(On a totally coincidental not-at-all related note, there's not enough SJ-and-SY-are-the-same-people fics out there that i've found. This is totally unrelated...)
The Endless Abyss turns the mind into an over-sharpened blade, and SQQ is both fascinated and perhaps a little excited to explore a place that doesn't have a lot of info on it in the mortal realm, but still terrified out of his mind. And he's no Luo Binghe, he doesn't have the sheer brute strength and power to just bulldoze his way through, so he has to be a lot more sneaky and cunning if he wants to survive.
The fic itself role-swapped LBH and SQQ so that SQQ was the half-demon (which lowkey fucks) and LBH the human, but I'm equally-if-not-more obsessed with the idea that LBH remains the half-heavenly demon and SQQ the human. If only because I keep thinking about SQQ befriending some demons (particularly and specifically a group of succubi) and they grow very attached to this Human Cultivator so through magic plot stuff they create some kind of seal/illusion/talisman that makes SQQ appear as a demon because a human cultivator in the endless abyss may as well be the equivalent of putting a giant neon target on your back.
And iirc Shen Jiu was taught demonic cultivation by that one guy(?? i've only been here a week so im not caught up in ALL of the lore yet) so that could totally happen here.
(On the other end of the realms, poor Shizun Luo Binghe is just. losing his fucking mind over losing his most precious and beloved disciple. About .5 seconds from burning down the peaks himself. somebody sedate him.)
The Endless Abyss sucks and SQQ is having a really terrible time and can feel himself going lowkey mad, but also holy shit look at all this WORLD-BUILDING. look at all this flora and fauna, and oh if he had the equipment for it he'd be writing all of this down. ALL OF IT. He was kinda-sorta-already planning on never leaving the Abyss as some sort of fucked up self-exile and self-preservation thing, but now he might? actually just?? never leave if he can help it, like he lowkey likes it down here.
anyways the next time anyone ever sees SQQ again he's got hair so long its almost touching the ground and he's either in rags and half-feral or he's been completely dolled up by his adoptive succubi sisters and still about three seconds from biting anyone who tries to touch him. (he's also lowkey trying to book it back down to the abyss even if he has desperately missed all of his friends and shizun)
#mxtx svsss#svsss au#scum villian self saving system#shen qingqiu#shen yuan#luo binghe#disciple shen yuan#scum villain#svsss#*points at SQQ/SY* i want him to go nuts. as a treat. let him crumble just a little over the stress of his fate and the stress of survival#and the stress of having a lack of autonomy over a handful of his decisions. starry craves angst and she craves a very specific SQQ angst#he was a number 1 hater back in the day and lbr being a hater takes energyyyy. ive heard that this man was the BIGGEST hater i wanna#see him rip a man to shreds with nothing but his tongue and a voice that could cut marble clean in half. skin a man alive sqq you deserve i#*mortal kombat voice* FINISH HIM#i love without-a-cure but unfortunately i dont think SQQ would be able to have WAC and also survive in the abyss.#the succubi nest that adopted him tried seducing him at first. it didn't work. but he did somehow charm them with his cringefail ways#so now they have a brand new mortal big/little brother to dote on. SQQ is frankly delighted to learn all about succubi culture that doesnt#revolve around sex. he makes quite a few friends/allies in the abyss because of his pure fascination and unbiased desire to learn about#demonic culture and all the different niches and nuances of it across species. he's still going insane tho. like that's not stopping.#there's a single LBH pov chapter in the fic and its frankly so unhinged it was fantastic. he's so possessive. he straight up goes:#'oh SQQ isnt gonna be the next peak lord. he's ascending to heaven with me when i do :)' when Sha Hualing (also peak lord) told him that he#couldn't keep his disciple in the bamboo house all the time. what was SQQ gonna do when LBH ascends and he becomes the new peak lord?#gosh that first chapter is rotating around in my mind so bad. LBH was SO unwell. like losing his actual shit over SQQ near the edge.#i so want to write a oneshot abt this where SQQ is also in hysterics (albeit over slightly diff reasons) and tells LBH on his knees:#'this disciple deeply apologizes to his shizun. for he will not be ascending to the heavens with him.' right before he falls into the abyss#this au being disciple SY is for shits and giggles but i can also see it happening for regular SQQ bc 'fuck it im a dead man either way'#frothing at the mouth at this idea also being a SY-is-SJ au too. for the extra angst of SQQ trying to bear the weight of multiple lives on#his shoulders and trying to figure out what is real and what isn't and if he's meant to suffer in all of his lives no matter what he does.#not once in his life has he ever been free to do what he likes has he? self-hatred to the max. he's going mad. poor boy :]
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forgettable-au · 29 days ago
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The pages are probably going to be posted a day later than usual :0
I was sick and couldn't work monday, so I'm a day behind
But I'm all better now wohooo
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royaltea000 · 5 months ago
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[wip] get your ass off the battlefield and become the twitch streamer cosplay slut you were always meant to be
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amethystina · 5 months ago
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I hate writing sometimes
And not necessarily the writing itself, but that moment when I can tell that a chapter is going to be less-than-ideal but there's nothing I can do about it because of pacing and plot reasons.
I'm trying to write chapter 41 of Who Holds the Devil and while I know exactly what's going to happen in it, I can already tell that the pacing is going to be off because it's just a lot of smaller scenes, in rapid succession, with quite a lot of time passing in one go. And that goes against the overall pacing of this fic nowadays, where a chapter is usually one or two days at most, with long and detailed scenes that slow down the pace a lot.
This chapter is going to stick out like a sore thumb.
And that annoys me, but I also can't change it since I refuse to add unnecessary stuff just to pad the runtime (this fic is long enough as it is). Nor do I want to remove anything, since some of it has been several chapters in the making (Go Eun will never forgive me if I forget her birthday) or needs to be in there for future plot purposes. So just... UGH.
I hate it.
I hate that I can tell that this chapter is going to feel rushed and disjointed compared to the rest, but that's just something I have to accept. The perfectionist within me is FUMING.
Writing sucks sometimes :C
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etoilesombre · 7 months ago
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Chapters: 1/2 Fandom: Black Sails Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Captain Flint | James McGraw/John Silver, Captain Flint | James McGraw/OCs, (nobody named or important), Background Silver/Madi - Relationship Characters: Captain Flint | James McGraw, John Silver Additional Tags: Angst, Mutual Pining, Miscommunication, Gangbang, Free Use, Sub Captain Flint, season 3-4 break, Heavy Alcohol Use, Drunk Sex, Anal Sex, Oral Sex, Dirty Talk, Humiliation, Period-Typical Homophobia, Only One Bed, (kind of on a technicality though), (but it's plot relevant), Silver is the world's best quartermaster, Flint handles emotions by being a bastard Summary:
As they prepare for war, a mission forces Flint and Silver to spend the night in the colonies. Overwhelmed and frustrated by his feelings for Silver, Flint tries to get his needs met via other avenues. Silver interrupts. Drama ensues.
(First chapter is their time ashore, and all of the actual gangbang stuff. Second is the aftermath, and silverflint smut. Cathartic happy ending guaranteed.)
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tenebriskukris · 1 month ago
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Oshi No Ko Chapter 162 - My Thoughts/Analysis
This chapter finally closes the book on this Hikaru-Aqua confrontation and gave us a shitty cliffhanger that we’re stuck waiting three bloody weeks for a conclusion. At this point I just want to put this manga to rest so that it can let me down one last time.
The chapter starts us off back in the saddle with Aqua and Hikaru.These were a cool couple of panels—with a shot of the backdrop then Aqua trying to strangle Hikaru, but I felt like this first page was largely unnecessary given how the last chapter ended.
I hit my head on a rock. Please imagine me staring at this page with a deadpan look. Aqua has LITERALLY stabbed himself before pushing the two of them down to the ocean. That’s some real good excuse to justify how Hikaru couldn’t have just swam away from Aqua considering that our protagonist is literally bleeding out. The most vexing part of these series of panels is that they just handwaved actually SHOWING them both tumble down the ocean. And while, yes, it probably wouldn’t have been necessary, the fact that the chapter just cuts away to such a halfhearted explanation when the first page was LITERALLY just filler feels too much like a cheap bait and switch for me to feel like this development was anything but an asspull.
Am I going to die in a place like this? Considering how this bitch is responsible for at least two deaths in the series so far—I find it very fitting that Hikaru is going to die Just Like This. Yura died in a similar manner, alone and isolated with her murderer gloating that he’d killed her and now it’s his turn on the chopping block.
Holy crap that shot of Goro’s shadow pulling Hikaru down! And then the one with Aqua floating upward while a bunch of shadowy hands drag Hikaru down…that’s some pretty on the nose symbolism of the people that Hikaru has intentionally or unintentionally ruined with his schemes. I’d have liked to get an actual body count for Hikaru as well as, you know, good fucking characterization that doesn’t rely on a deus ex machena, but we can’t all get what we want.
I felt like I was only alive when I was with Ai. [...] Even if it was the weight of my own sin. I wanted to feel it forever. The Japanese mental health system—or lack thereof—claims another victim. Still a murderer, though.
I could’ve felt you more if I had killed Ruby. Unrepentant to the end, I see. Good fucking riddance to terribly written antagonists. As sad as Hikaru’s backstory is, it falls squarely under the category of “Sad motive! Still murder.” As much as I can sympathize with his sad backstory and the way that his life turned out, that doesn’t excuse the fact that, you know, he literally had a hand in murdering people—but I’m getting ahead of myself, I’ll touch on those thoughts after the chapter.
And now we return to Crow Girl. Are we going to get the deus ex machena now? 
OH HEY I KNOW THIS PANEL FROM THE ANIME OPENING! Whether or not the anime staff knew that this panel was going to happen or the authors took inspiration from it isn’t quite clear but it’s a nice little nod and a wink to the anime. Crossing my fingers that it’ll get to this point and fix up some of the garbage pacing we see during these last two dozen chapters, but considering we just got a season three for the anime I think it’s likely we’ll be getting to this point.
Have you finally found your mission? Oh? Are we going to finally find out why Aqua was reincarnated in the first place? I’d been hypothesizing that it had to do with Ruby for awhile now outside these analyses since that was one of the only constants that Aqua had when he was reincarnated but I’m curious to see how this mess goes.
The reason I lived…was to protect my own sister. That’s—hm. Well. I certainly have Thoughts about That but we’ll get to that after the chapter. The page dealing with Aqua and Ruby’s interactions…as well as that panel of Goro and Sarina…it’s pretty sad, I gotta admit. 
Thank goodness. This time I can die before you. Sad little panel, but considering there is Literally a god watching Aqua and said god is one that is sort of invested in his story at the moment—enough to actually interfere with said story as an actor in the fucking movie at his behest—I think it’s more than likely that Aqua survives this whole ordeal.
This was honestly a bit of a shorter chapter to get through but it’s still one that I have plenty of thoughts about.
There was originally an entire mountain of paragraphs here about Hikaru and his place as an antagonist of the series, but I wrote so much about that topic that I’ve decided to turn it into its own post instead of inserting it here. Expect that analysis to come out hopefully before the next chapter drops. I’ll instead focus on Aqua concluding that he was born to protect Ruby.
I’m honestly torn about the reveal. On the one hand it makes a certain degree of sense—in a messy and half assed sort of way. After Ai’s death he was considerably more protective of his sister—following her into the same high school as well as going so far as to shut down Ruby’s attempts to become an underground idol. This is compounded by the fact that Aqua asked Kana to protect his precious sister when he was persuading her to join B-Komachi, as well as scouted Mem—someone who he’d known and who he’d already grasped her character—into B-Komachi instead of any strangers that could’ve been Ruby’s idol partners.Hell, he’d even done quite a bit of legwork to ensure that his sister’s first performance had gone well by posing as Pieyon.
On the other hand I feel very dissatisfied with Aqua’s conclusion because of everything that had happened in the series ex post facto. If this was a theme that the writers wanted to press for the ending of the series then it should’ve been highlighted a hell of a lot more! The page full of panels detailing scenes where Aqua “protects” Ruby just fall flat because of the fact that these are all completely new panels that the reader hasn’t ever seen! If this was supposed to be A Thing then why weren’t these panels sprinkled into the series beforehand??? Why weren’t there more interactions with Aqua protecting Ruby so that readers could go “Aqua has always been protecting Ruby throughout the series so revealing that Aqua’s purpose was all to protect Ruby makes sense.” Except it doesn’t! The examples that I’d previously mentioned are nice and all but it isn’t substantial enough for me to fully be on board with this reveal as most of said examples were in the earlier part of the series! Where’s Aqua protecting Ruby in the later arcs, huh? Where do we get to see Aqua intentionally going out of his way to keep an eye on Ruby, to make sure she’s protected post Tokyo Blade? One could argue that Akane disguising herself as Ruby sort of counts since Aqua is involved in it, but come the fuck on would it be so hard to actually SHOW that Aqua had a hand in it instead of handwaving that plot thread???
Obviously this reveal needs to be taken into the proper context—the manga’s writing and quality has fallen dramatically below average for the past forty chapters or so. But the fact that the page showing all the times Aqua “protected” Ruby contained completely new panels is just so incredibly egregious. You’d think that such an important reveal—the entire REASON that Aqua was reincarnated in the first place would have been established more during the course of the whole bloody series instead of shoving these completely new panels down our throat without priming the readers for this reveal in the first place!
If I’m giving the manga the benefit of the doubt—which I shouldn’t even be doing because of how objectively bad some of these chapters have been recently—there’s still plenty of room for doubt with regards to Aqua’s conclusion. It wouldn’t be the first time that Aqua was just plain wrong—he assumed his father was dead without making any effort to confirm that. These characters aren’t infallible, though with how the narrative speaks through the characters on occasion it’s easy to forget that. Obviously if the manga doesn’t deign to comment on Aqua’s conclusion again then it’s de facto canon because they’d need to clarify such an important plot beat and not let an incorrect conclusion stand by unchallenged.
The other interpretation of these events is that Aqua was too blinded by revenge to fulfill the reason he was reincarnated, and therefore, there wouldn’t have been many moments where Aqua was able to protect Ruby. But I find that interpretation, for lack of a better term, a hot steaming pile of BULLSHIT. The only reason that Aqua was able to “protect” Ruby here in the first place from Hikaru was because he had gone through his revenge scheme in the first place! If Aqua didn’t spend this much effort trying to catch Hikaru throughout the series and instead decided to become a surgeon like he wanted, then Hikaru would’ve had a free hand to target Ruby whenever he wanted. He wouldn’t have been able to find out Hikaru’s identity, nor would he be able to figure out that he wouldn’t be satisfied with killing Ai, or even that Ruby was at risk in the first place. If Aqua didn’t attempt to find Hikaru to take revenge, then Ruby would’ve been collateral damage in the process.
I do wonder though—disregarding whether or not Aqua is right about why he was reincarnated—what was the reason that Ruby was reincarnated in the first place? The obvious answer is Ruby was reincarnated as a twin to meet AquaGoro again. Aqua’s reason—assuming it’s accurate—for reincarnating was related to Ruby, and it’d make a certain degree of sense for the reverse to be true as well. Of course, that’s all just speculation, but it makes one wonder…
On the whole though, this chapter certainly happened. Hikaru and Aqua’s second confrontation has ended with Hikaru finally biting it and Aqua’s state being unknown for three bloody weeks. And with four bloody chapters remaining for the manga, I don’t expect anything resembling a good ending to wrap up any of the lingering plot threads the manga’s been pushing at us.
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lesbianwithchainsaws · 5 months ago
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They should invent a day where you can actually get done all the things you want/need to do
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whumpy-wyrms · 9 months ago
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just spent 4 hours building Anton’s lab in minecraft and i’m done and it’s soooo cool you guys it’s just like how i imagined (obviously as close as i could get cuz it’s minecraft). gonna build Anton’s cabin above it next but i’ll probably post screenshots of the lab tomorrow so you guys can actually see how i imagine it (cuz it’s hard for me to draw it). if anyone wants to join my world and explore it (bedrock edition only, sorry) feel free to message me!!! like seriously i don’t bite!!!! i love playing minecraft with people :DDD
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9eeeeevvvvvaaaaa6 · 9 days ago
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WHO WINS?
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Copyright: SWR3
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Copyright: Business Standard
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boleynqueenes · 9 months ago
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seven sentence sunday, was tagged by @theladyelizabeth
idk who is actively working on wip's, or comfortable sharing them if they are, but i hope it doesn't offend if i tag @mihrsuri @annabolinas @period-dramallama @boleynism @quillington
Six 7 Sentence Sunday is a writing thing where, on Sunday, you post six 7 sentences from an unfinished work. It can be a new fic, a new chapter of a WIP, or even something you’re not sure you’ll ever post. 
Choose an excerpt from any section (and it doesn’t have to be six sentences) and post it, letting people know what it belongs to or indicating that it’s something you’re working on. 
People get a preview of what’s coming. You get some feedback on what’s there. If they like it, you might get some reblogs that will generate more interest in your story or you as a writer. 
-
After the second time, he begins to make another excuse: that he struggles to deny his desire for her when they share the same bed. Anne verily doubts this. He is no longer in the virile peak of manhood he once was, while he courted her, and it is more often the opposite: there are times when his desire fails him. Granted, it's not such an implacable failure: it comes back once he remembers them, as their two, as they used to be (those days, in which they had only been each other's). Once they are safely away from the backbiting of court, as they had been this Progress, so he fulfills the promise he once made her; 'to make [her] sing, la renvoyé.'
Desire fails them both, in truth, on those nights when their marital sacrament is strained by the weight of its duty: to have an heir, to secure the succession and safety of their realm, their people. As it all falls…she cannot insist on their shared bed anymore. If Anne did not have to sleep as herself, she would not, either. She can't shame or deny him wanting to sleep apart when she so fully understands why he takes the abstention. She cannot, not when she knows his courage has already been exhausted. Knowing all this, all she can hope for is that the same is not true of his love.  
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inkstainedhandswithrings · 6 months ago
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OKAY PARTY PEOPLE!!
Are you ready?
Are you sure??
CHAPTER 11!!!
chapter summery: Nevaeh struggles for resolution on multiple fronts.
chapter summery in memes:
Ten watching Nevaeh and Danai interact:
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Obi-Wan and Nevaeh trying to talk to each other:
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The general vibe of this chapter:
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much love and thanks to the incredible @saturn-sends-hugs for a new meme supply!! In Austria we call what you did an “Eigentor”! So thanks for that :D
taglist below cut! if you’d like to be added feel free to dm/ask!
@saturn-sends-hugs @phantom-of-the-501st @shahrezaad @ihaventpiickedausername @exxasperatedauthor
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not-poignant · 7 months ago
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Hello Pia. Could you please elaborate a little about challenging a peak alpha and how they really can or connot controll things when they are challenged? As I understand ardolphogen is pieaking when they are in this situation? And they MUST do something? Or? I was comparing two scenes exactly - Ef challenge Gary and Janusz challengeTemsen. Thank you!
Hi anon!
I can definitely elaborate on this :D
(Under a read more because I...well...elaborated.)
So, firstly, Temsen and Gary are different people, and how they react to things are going to be different. This is true across a lot of different situations. Consider, for example, that Efnisien has been rude to Gary many times and Gary has just let him, but if Efnisien does that even slightly to Temsen, Temsen scolds him immediately!
They are different situations. Gary tolerates Efnisien's rudeness because he finds it charming/amusing and he likes that. Temsen doesn't tolerate it at all, because he believes that as a doctor and a peak alpha, he should be awarded respect from other alphas, especially young alphas who have shown a pattern of violent, abusive, disrespectful or immature behaviour (which Efnisien has!) -
This is also why Temsen tolerates Janusz' disrespect better than he does Efnisien's, because he knows it comes from a place of severe trauma. Janusz has PTSD from his experiences with Nate, and that is Hillview's fault and responsibility. Janusz is right to be angry, and his challenge comes from a genuine place of injustice.
Temsen recognises that he is culpable here, and that he has no grounds on which to scold Janusz, in other words he recognises that he's earned some disrespect on this specific issue. He can also tell that Janusz is doing it from a place of stepping into his strength to take care of Nate - that's something Temsen has asked him to do and that he wants, even if it comes from a disrespectful place (momentarily - most of what Janusz says is measured, calm, and clear - and actually not disrespectful at all - disagreeing is not disrespect). So that situation has a lot of different things happening which causes Temsen to react / not react the way he does!
Most important, no one here has any idea what Efnisien does or says to mount the challenge in the next chapter. Assuming it's solely based on what happened in this chapter is understandable! But that's not what it is. If Efnisien doesn't do what he does in the next chapter (which I'm not going to spoil), Gary's reaction would never have happened. They would have talked about Gary's uneasiness around Efnisien feeling the need to protect him, they would have gone back to normal, and they would have been fine.
Efnisien is also experiencing something new for him that he's never gone through before, and no one's really mentioned it yet. Gary had his ardolphogen rage, Efnsien also has ardolphogen in his system. He was dissociated into his rage state in that chapter, and wasn't thinking clearly, especially as he escalated his violence against Cella. We have no indication that he's left this mental/hormonal space or that it's calmed down, because he lost consciousness, and hasn't really been himself since. Alphas and anger control issues go hand in hand, the ardolphogen is not like testosterone (after all, in the omegaverse, they make both!), they can't just go 'oh huh I've been flooded with hormones, let me not do what they're telling me to do.'
And, fun fact, actually most humans can't do this past a certain point! Tell a person with PTSD to simply calmly think through their fight/flight response and stop having flashbacks, and they're going to laugh in your face, or never talk to you again. Lots of people have intense hormonal states they can't just shrug off! They must respond. It's just that the hormones and the emotions are different.
Gary has PACS, an unstable internal emotional landscape, and has been treated as a pariah by the news media, James' entire family, and has challenging mental health issues, from being casually suicidal for years after James' death and hoping that something would kill him, to being very hostile initially to making intimate connections with other people.
Gary and Temsen aren't in any way starting in the same playing field here. Temsen is happy, he's fulfilled, he's got a greater capacity for not responding to disrespect, and he also practices early intervention selectively - badly behaved alphas get scolded, usually-good-alphas who have a reason get a pass.
That being said, we've never seen anyone mount a direct challenge to Temsen, so we've never seen his response to them. No one really does it. That would be the equivalent of someone trying to pin a peak alpha to the ground, mount them physically, take a 'dominating' position over them, threaten them with physicality, or threaten to kill them in a duel etc. Obviously there's very few circumstances where this would happen and very few people would be willing to try (except for other peak alphas lol), because it's legal for peak alphas to murder anyone who attempts it, because they aren't in control of their hormonal responses when it happens.
In fact the only way to easily take advantage of a peak alpha that way is while they're sleeping or while they're too sick to fight back.
And I'll leave that as the context for the next chapter.
But, yes, when an alpha mounts a challenge to a peak alpha, physiologically they must respond. And most respond with immediate, lethal force.
Comparing what Temsen's experienced with what Gary's about to experience is like comparing apples and oranges. They're just not the same thing, and they're not comparable. We've seen Gary be disrespected by Efnisien nearly 100 times by now, we know - with only a few exceptions that involved either domestic violence initiated by Efnisien or extreme verbal disrespect - he can handle that.
What we're about to see from Efnisien is not what he's done before.
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coffeeandcalligraphy · 2 years ago
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24-Karat Harrison | BODY BACK Update #3
THE WRITING UPDATE WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR (I’M WE)!
Let's chat chapter 3 of my literary fiction novella, BODY BACK! Harrison stares at himself in so many bathroom mirrors, gets down to Don't Cha (Pussycat Dolls), tries to forget the man he once was, reclaims himself through excess, & more! Post under the cut!
Logline: After an argument with his mother draws him much too close to the past, Harrison turns to Jeremiah to help him develop a gilded persona.
Update 1 | Update 2
BODY BACK taglist (please ask to be added or removed :))
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Random thoughts turn into...
A couple weeks ago, I was oversharing in my tags and in the process of doing so, came up with the phrase "24-karat harrison."
#I don't drink but I can positively say drunk rachel would 100% be just harrison like 24 karat harrison #actually going to get him to describe himself as 24 karat harrison in the next bb chapter fantastic this was a productive random thought
AND SO 24K HARRISON WAS BORN!
What does it mean to split yourself into two facets, one polished, one unpolished? What could you do if YOU were "24-karat" for a day? This phrase instantly shaped the entire direction of this chapter.
Also, as a poet, I cannot overlook how wonderfully "24-karat" and "Harrison" match each other. VISUAL congruency?? Syllabic harmony??? THE ASSONANCE?? He was built for this.
The plot
CW: this is the most *mature content* chapter I've written in BB so there are mentions of sex, drugs, and suicidal ideation.
"24-Karat Harrison" jumps right off the last chapter of BB where Harrison's stormed away from his mother after she drives him to Lonan's apartment (lol). He arrives at Jeremiah's place tired of who he is and in desperate need of a major change.
The chapter is split into two simple halves: scenes in Jeremiah's apartment, and scenes in a Las Vegas nightclub. How Harrison manages to get into so many shenanigans in these two locations alone astounds me! :)
Scene A:
Harrison turns up on Jeremiah's doorstep soaking wet from the rain. He's looking for a distraction :) & Jeremiah provides :)
Scene B:
A Haremiah pillow talk moment that ends abruptly when Harrison asks Jeremiah if he has Tylenol???? (romantic king /s)
In scene A, Harrison noticed Jeremiah hosted a party. Here, he asks him why he wasn't invited, and Jeremiah suggests it's because he seems too quiet to party
Scene C:
In an attempt to manufacture a more confident personality, Jeremiah helps style Harrison, complete with a fur coat and cowboy hat (horrifying).
Scene D:
Harrison retreats to the bathroom while he and Jeremiah wait for their ride to the club. He's not confident despite the new outfit and goes feral on Jeremiah's hair products, makeup, cologne etc. He finally sees 24-Karat Harrison in the mirror and is pleased.
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Scene E:
At the club, Harrison and Jeremiah run into Biyu, Jeremiah's friend from Chapter 6 of Moth Work. His confidence is shot when she suggests he's quiet despite his new persona.
Scene F:
Harrison dances with Jeremiah, but is unable to shake Biyu's comments. He presses Jeremiah for validation, but Jeremiah wants to have a good night, not therapize the man he's seeing.
As Harrison continues to pester, Jeremiah reunites with his friends and is drawn into a (potential) group make out session. Harrison gets overstimulated.
Harrison flees to the club bathroom for reprieve when he again catches his reflection and doesn't recognize himself. His lack of recognition angers him--he's tired of seeing everyone in his face but himself.
A man--Perry--who is one of Jeremiah's friends, interrupts Harrison at the mirror to flirt. Harrison is agitated but drawn to him nonetheless.
Writing process & themes
I talked about how I structure chapters for BODY BACK in THIS post, but essentially, I orbit each scene around a particular theme.
I didn't really know what the theme of this chapter was until yesterday. I'd noticed I kept "repeating beats" throughout this chapter--particularly, Harrison analyzing himself in bathroom mirrors, which happens THREE times. At first, I thought I'd done something wrong because Harrison seemed to keep "backtracking" in narrative which made his psychology seem inconsistent.
By the time I got to the final reflection analyzation though, I realized THAT was the theme--bobbing between extremes when you're in the middle of an identity crisis.
What Harrison doesn't admit to himself in this chapter is that he's lost himself since he broke up with Lonan. The only Harrison he knows is the Harrison who chased Lonan across the country, put his needs above his own, etc. Now that Lonan's gone, Harrison doesn't know himself at all. This is why he reaches toward 24k Harrison, a caricature of himself painted in broad, unsubtle strokes--at the very least, he won't forget himself if he looks ridiculous.
But it doesn't work! This is because versions of who he "was" keep popping up. He can't help but feel like the vulnerable person he was when he was with Lonan.
Therefore, we really explore extremes in 24kH. Extreme pleasure VS extreme hollowness (Jeremiah kissing him in the doorway and then immediately walking away in scene A). In scene C he’s hot but he’s not. He wants to sleep with himself but he’s not desirable at all. He's alright with begging but wants to be begged. He wants to live a very specific life where he buys cowboy hats for livestock and eats ice cream with his hands but he also wants to die. He’s Jesus but he’s discarded bits of gold (THANK YOU for pointing that out @jaydewritesfiction!). He’s twinkling but he’s the dullest person in the room.
It took me a while to actually see I'd been doing that--purposefully creating contradictions in narrative--the ENTIRE chapter. Smh Rachel, good job with all those literary devices you didn't realize you were using.
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This chapter took me a lot longer to write than I wanted it to (about a month), but it's also because it's SO long (7k, which is currently half the manuscript). I'm so happy with how it turned out though because its creation represents EVERYTHING I love about it: impulsivity, chasing highs, uncovering darker folds of you the longer you sit inside manufactured gold.
Music
Music was SOOO important in the conception and understanding of 24kH for me, more than usual! In fact, I've made a very specific playlist that is a track-by-track breakdown of the chapter (in order).
Here's a quick breakdown of each song & where they go in the chapter!
1. Nobody by Greyson Chance (studio version) - Backbone of the ENTIRE chapter!!!! Chapter starts with this song.
2. Hands by Greyson Chance - Haremiah make out ANTHEM <3. Also in scene A.
3. Hellboy by Greyson Chance - End of scene A where Haremiah gets... intense lol love <3
4. Fade Into You by Mazzy Star - This is on the radio while Haremiah gets DOWN. Start of scene B.
5. Aloe Vera by Greyson Chance - Haremiah sharing a joint & pillow talk song. Middle of scene B.
6. I Got So High That I Saw Jesus by Noah Cyrus - Haremiah sharing a joint & pillow talk song but it's getting sadder & more internal. End of scene B.
7. Nobody by Greyson Chance (live version) - CRITICAL song for this chapter so it appears twice!!! Live version is Harrison at the start of scene C.
8. Black Mascara by Greyson Chance - Harrison analyzing himself in the mirror ANTHEM (this song is also the backbone of this chapter). Harrison goes feral in the bathroom because he thinks he's better off when he does what he fucking wants etc.
9. I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred - Actually this is supposed to be the Shrek version :) so :) anyway self-explanatory. Rest of C.
10. Welcome to the DCC by Nothing But Thieves - Walking into the club anthem (scene E).
11. SexyBack by Justin Timberlake - Dancing and feeling real good about it (beginning of scene F).
12. Don't Cha by The Pussycat Dolls - SELF-EXPLANATORY don't you wish your girlfriend was hot like 24-karat Harrison (middle of scene F).
13. Sex & Other Drugs by Greyson Chance - Fleeing to the bathroom anthem (for sex & other drugs??? maybe; rest of scene F).
I also wanted to talk about the significance of the track Nobody because... it's this WHOLE chapter! I wrote this tag essay about it a couple weeks ago when I shared an excerpt where Harrison sees himself as a trophy while in the 24kH getup (excerpted later in the post):
#also there are many greyson chance easter eggs here #the trophy bit i've already mentioned is a reference to the live version of “nobody” #where he goes 'i'm not the trophy you think i am' #which is actually not in the studio version #ANYWAY the LIVE VERSION is a sad piano ballad of THAT #so anyway I love that the trophy line #was cut from the studio version but is in the sad piano version lol #don't know how to more articulately describe harrison's psychology in BB except for... that
The idea of "I'm not the trophy you think I am" really is the thematic crux of this chapter. Harrison KNOWS he's not good enough for Jeremiah. He also knows he wasn't good enough for Lonan. Everyone's looking at him like he's a saint somehow--to Lonan he was, only mattering when he was long martyred. Jeremiah sees too much good in Harrison, good that Harrison doesn't see in himself. At moments, Harrison IS confident. He IS the trophy. But then there are those sobering moments when reality hits him and he knows he just isn't (SAD). It's why he creates 24kH because HE could be good enough (and the truth is, he still isn't).
Excerpts
Jeremiah greets Harrison at the door lol:
Jeremiah might be the only man alive who’d open the door for someone as soggy as Harrison.
He’s shirtless and damp from the shower, a green toothbrush lodged against his gums. His heathered sweats drape low on his waist, bronze skin varnished with moisturizer. And Harrison likes this—a man mid nighttime routine—but what he likes more is how unstartled Jeremiah is when he grabs him by the hips and kisses him so hard, bristles jolt against his tongue. What’s he looking for in another man’s mouth—heavens, gods, a prayer? Fuck if he knows. What matters are Jeremiah’s chiclet teeth, Jeremiah’s healthy gums, the way in one gulp, they all become Harrison’s. And this is what normal is, yeah—Jeremiah a minty man ensconced by a bare tungsten bulb, Harrison his midnight lover, both of them in need of the other simply because they are here, alive, men.
Jeremiah gives Harrison whiplash lmao show him king!!!:
But in one dizzy breath, they’re separated, and the thought is gone as quickly as Jeremiah who slinks through his apartment like an unbothered shorthair, telling Harrison to lock the front door, to follow him to the bathroom.
Harrison’s ears buzz. He stares at the living room, wipes his mouth of foam, his lips tingling with menthol. Jeremiah hosted a party earlier. A game of parcheesi scattered on the coffee table, the kitchen sink teetering with mismatched cups, saucers. Cigarette butts pock a strawberry-shaped ashtray like seeds. Harrison salivates, tempted for a moment to filch around for one salvageable enough to relight. It’s only when Jeremiah calls his name that he shakes out of his stupor. But still, by the time he reaches the beaded bathroom door, he has to distract his mouth by digging his lips into the scalloped moulding.
Jeremiah crooks a brow at him in the mirror, then turns to the sink, spits. He’s gargling with mouthwash when he asks a question.
“What?” Harrison asks. His head hurts. Jeremiah would have a bottle of acetaminophen in his medicine cabinet, wouldn’t he?
Jeremiah holds up a hand as he swishes, rubbing at spats of toothpaste on the mirror with his wrist. He spits again. “You go swimming or something?”
Jeremiah is an ANGEL in the bathroom:
Jeremiah leans against the counter, haloed by one of three lightbulbs that isn’t blown out over the vanity. Harrison offered to replace them a week ago and still hasn’t done it, perhaps because the low light is more inviting, the way it cups Jeremiah like mist. Though maybe any lighting would be inviting to Harrison when he’s like this—in such high need of ravaging something.
Jeremiah wets his lips, glancing away with a mute smile before he looks right back. “Or is the rain really bad?” Harrison takes a step forward, and then another, another. Suzanna could be looking for him, calling everyone she knows in this city to help bring her son home. She won’t sleep tonight, and Harrison won’t either but for different reasons. In front of him, Jeremiah is as sunny as he is unaware, his curls plump around his ears, a man Harrison would like to undo with one look—to make beg, like gods make their believers do.
Lonan Clark behaviour:
“You’re like a wet dog,” says Jeremiah. A breath wheezes in his chest.
Harrison looks up at him. From this angle, bowed against another man’s body, he could look like a believer in supplication. Please go gently. Please spare my life. “Thank you.”
CUTE Haremiah interrupted by Harrison's terrible timing:
Now Jeremiah nuzzles into his ribs. He smells like soap and orange rinds, his tattooed skin downy under Harrison’s callused fingertips. He traces an empty fishbowl on Jeremiah’s arm with his pinkie, a half-finished anatomical heart with his thumb, a wobbly dandelion with his ring finger, the cherub guarding his elbow with his index. I love you, he could say. They’ve known each other for two weeks, hung out less than ten times, spent most of their time examining each other’s hands. But this could be love, right? Jeremiah’s made him breakfast every night he’s stayed over—peach French toast, hot muesli, black coffee. Every time they watch film noir on Jeremiah’s two-seater, they simply find each other’s hair and twirl, sometimes meet each other’s mouths and hover there, these clement weekend lovers.
“You got any painkillers?” Harrison asks.
Jeremiah jerks against his skin, his nose knocking into Harrison’s shoulder blade. He hikes onto his elbow, brows furrowed like he’s about to say something when his eyes narrow on Harrison’s finger.
“You’re wearing my ring,” he says, leaning toward Harrison’s hand for a better look.
“Am I?”
If I were Harrison I would simply just forget about Lonan because JEREMIAH???
Jeremiah should paint his room sage. The cherrywood picture frames warrant it. In the corner, a gold mirror flares like Jesus’ spoked halo. Two crinkled issues of the New York Times on the vanity, an ivory sheepskin throw collapsed in the corner. Jeremiah exists here mid-motion—the condom wrappers on the hardwood leading to the mattress like Hansel’s pebbles, sunglasses spoked in a magazine rack, a used cotton ball stained with black nail polish on the windowsill. Harrison absorbs it all on his back like rapidly flattening dough. He could be part of this room, too. Last Monday, Jeremiah suggested he move in. “You can sleep in the bathtub,” he joked, but kissed the back of Harrison’s neck. He’d smelled bright like the leather polish he’d buffed onto his bomber jacket. “Or elsewhere.”
Jeremiah as a trophy & LMFAO tYLeNoL???
Now, Harrison weakly reaches for Jeremiah’s hair, winds a curl around his finger. Jeremiah is soft like brioche and as dazzling as a mirror ball. And what’s the difference between worshipping him and Jesus if they are both men? At least Jeremiah is here, a trophy in front of him.
“Tylenol?” he whispers.
Cont'd:
Jeremiah places a hand on Harrison’s face. In his eyes, Harrison is insufficient, an edge of a man. Perhaps it’s the headache or Jeremiah’s gentle concern, but after a moment, the feeling is so unbearable that he pulls away and buries his face in the pillow. The mattress springs when Jeremiah rises, and for a moment, Harrison feels suspended in air like a crucified Jesus above the altar. He doesn’t have a face, a body, a heart. He is just dust.
Harrison wants to be a spider so he can finally be a homeowner?? ok same:
He slumps back onto the bed, analyzing the popcorn ceiling when Jeremiah climbs in next to him. He slings an arm around Harrison’s bare shoulders, and they pass the joint back and forth, its scent rich like oregano. The smoke is delicate as a dissipating spider’s web, pale and gauzy like a curtain in morning light. As Harrison smokes, he imagines what it might be like to be an arachnid—the many homes he could make.
Harrison really knows how to ruin a moment pt. 5 bajillion:
There’s a damp spot on the ceiling that’s only visible when car headlights skirt past the building. Harrison’s meant to ask about it, but what would be the point now? It’s not like he could fix it—and if Jeremiah doesn’t look at the right time, he’ll never notice. “You didn’t invite me,” Harrison says.
Jeremiah jumps. From here, he’s a mere lump under the covers, the only physical evidence of him his warm breaths on Harrison’s stomach. “What?” he asks.
Harrison twists the joint, puffs. His tongue feels bloated like his jacket. “To your party.”
A pause. When Jeremiah next speaks, his voice is muffled by the sheets. “I didn’t think that was your scene.” He rests his cheek on Harrison’s sternum, and he’s heavy like the jacket too. “You know. Crowds.”
“What made you think that?”
Jeremiah burrows out from the duvet. Harrison knows he’s trying to look at him, but he’s caught up in the ceiling again, the way that patch ebbs like a candle’s flame. “You’re…”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” Jeremiah says, crossing his legs. “Meek.”
Harrison wants to laugh—meek like a lamb, a poplar, a monotonous prairie, a man’s whispered okay, a frail river, a piano’s high C played over and over and over and over and over again—but what comes out instead is a whimper. Jeremiah cups his face again, says something about good things, compliments, the power in mildness. He smells like baby powder now, plumeria—and why is that? He’s a man forever in change even in the simplest of ways, thriving in his evolution. Harrison’s favourite colour has been the same since he was four.
He holds Jeremiah’s jaw to shut him up. His eyes are flecked with topaz today, sienna tomorrow. If Harrison could touch God tonight. If Harrison could believe in something for just a minute.
“Make me feral,” he whispers.
COWBOY HAT??
Jeremiah starts with a new jacket. He’s made it clear that Harrison can’t go clubbing soaking wet, so they rifle through his closet and land on a fur coat that was last dry-cleaned months ago. It’s knee-length, the sleeves wide catacombs, the taupe fur brindled like Eliza’s tortoise-shell ring. Lonan’s ring, technically. In front of his standing mirror, Jeremiah unearths it from the garment bag like it’s a body, holds the hanger in front of Harrison so the fabric drapes off his chest.
“You like it?” asks Jeremiah, cheek pressed to Harrison’s shoulder blade. He’s laid out a tasseled button-up for himself that glitters like hematite in the light, and he’ll dazzle in it, of course—Jeremiah is built for this, the sharpened eyeliners on the bathroom counter, the dented cans of hair mousse, the nail file on the dresser, the ridged perfume atomizer he’ll mist himself with a moment before they leave the apartment. He is sleek beauty, a marbleized man ready to be polished, adored.
And what is Harrison, then? With the fur coat cinched against his body, he could be polished, too, couldn’t he? Sure, he isn’t a gilded icon, but maybe he sees Jesus in his face right now because he has the potential to be, or because at their cores, they’re both sad men. His hair doesn’t have to look like Suzanna’s, but instead like the young bark of cinnamon. And his eyes—they’re not his father’s but his own, an unmarred pool of teal. Maybe he’s a little rough where he should be suave, but that’s hot nowadays, isn’t it? Besides, if Jeremiah sees something angelic in that mirror, then yeah, Harrison could see it too. Forget his cryptic mouth, his hair that’s too long as Suzanna pointed out, his eyes and the way they’re wounded, not like a deer’s in headlights but like a deer’s in death. Forget the scar across his forehead, the way another man’s hands used to touch it not like it was lightning but a pathway to some better place. Sure, Harrison’s no Christ, no Jacob, no God—but why should he be? He’s here under the tungsten bite of Jeremiah’s chandelier, a man in shameless excess, eyes more spangled than this country’s flag. And he could stay here, couldn’t he? He could enjoy staring at himself, not like he’s bronze but like he’s pure gold.
Cont'd (this is so sad LOL):
He straightens, adjusts the fur on his shoulder. In truth, he looks too much like his mother, stands too much like his father, stares too much like Lonan. His hands aren’t soft. He’s got split ends. At best he smells like cigarette smoke, car exhaust, chlorine. But what does Jeremiah see? Maybe someone loveable yeah, maybe someone to cry over. For a moment, Harrison worries the answer is nothing at all.
And then a nose nudges against the back of his neck, Jeremiah muttering about Madonna’s new album, buying new razors, growing his own marijuana. In minutes, they’ll be dancing until the room spirals or until they’re extensions of the other, whichever comes first. And Harrison will love it all because he loves everything about his life—this new jacket, this new man, this face that isn’t a reminder of who used to look at it, this muggy room, this mirror like a portal he could almost step through, this breakthrough because he’s gold. He’s gold.
Harrison steps away from the mirror, presses a hand against his eyeball. He’s going to need another Tylenol. An Ibuprofen for the hell of it. What if Jacob never dreamt of God, made the whole story up? What if Jacob just wanted to run away with his livestock? Harrison could use livestock.
He turns to Jeremiah. “You got a cowboy hat?” he asks.
Harrison making out with himself because that's a normal thing to do:
Funnily, Jeremiah does have a cowboy hat. It’s aptly doused in cow-print, smells like plastic and mulch. In the bathroom, Harrison adjusts its stampede strings around his chin.
He leans against the counter, pressing his thumbs to his cheeks. He pulls at his eye sockets, his skin giving like a tablecloth twisted under the heave of roasted turkey. His eyes are rimmed in scarlet—how many times has he seen Suzanna with these eyes, and do her eyes look like this now? She’s probably looking for him, calling his name out in the night like it’s a prayer she knows won’t be answered. Would he take himself to bed like this? In thirty more minutes when he guzzles a vodka soda, his answer will be absolutely.
Harrison, he mouths to himself in the mirror. The bathroom is filmy or maybe it’s him—he’s in chrysalis, bloated in his own becoming or suffocation or whatever the fuck. The thing is, he doesn’t need a god and might be a king, but he’s also a man with a pounding headache. He tries again, his mouth shifty like cornmeal, like ash: Harrison. What do kings do when they get migraines? Buy a donut? Eat a saint? His eye sockets are vacant, his cuticles spinning into one another, hair sentient from the pool. Harrison. The walls smell like Jeremiah’s hair gel, Jeremiah’s fingerprints, Jeremiah’s latest cologne. In a minute, the paint could start peeling and Harrison could pick up the chips, tack them to his jaw like they’re gold stars or little HELLO my name is stickers. HELLO my name is, HELLO my name is, HELLO my name is. Harrison. Harrison. Harrison. He kneads his cheeks like he’s sourdough, pinches his eyebrows, goes: Harrison, sticks his fist in his mouth tries again—Harrison. Jeremiah knocks on the door, says something about leaving soon, a friend waiting on them.
Harrison sinks onto his elbows, hovering closer to his reflection. If he were another man, he’d kiss himself, right? Without a thought, he does, mouth glugging against the mirror. He doesn’t need any touch but his own—not Jeremiah’s, not Lonan’s. He’s a man in love with himself, right? He’s a good dancer, never burns pancakes, isn’t afraid of spiders. What’s not to like? When he pulls back, panting, his eyes are watery and he needs a drink now, a god to abandon, a lake to drown in, a coastline to paint, a mother to cry into, a Bible to burn, a guitar string to snap, a dragon tree to kill, a father to remember, a prayer to scream, a place to close his eyes and sleep forever.
He grabs Jeremiah’s eyelash curler off the counter, crimps his lashes so hard he pinches his skin. He doesn’t care. He’s yanking open cupboards and pulling out an eyeshadow palette, smearing silver pigment onto his eyelids, under them. He’s raking a wand of black mascara through his lashes like he’s the grass buried under leaves—like this is the only way to reveal himself. And maybe this is the way, spritzing himself in Jeremiah’s vetiver or orange rinds or baby powder. Harrison. He wants to punch his nose until he bleeds. He wants to kiss himself again.
0 to 100 all the way back to 0 babe:
Harrison meets his eyes in the mirror. Is he an animal? He must be something feral, starved of something and ravaged by that hunger. He could touch himself right here. Or not. He’s barely a man, staring at his face not like it’s his, but like it’s someone else’s. And how tired he is of that. Being a shadow.
He is the MOMENT:
Before he exits the bathroom, he studies his sterling reflection. He’s not who he once was. No Christ, no Jacob, no Jeremiah. And he shouldn’t be. Because he’s twenty-four karat, twinkling, not just otherworldly, unforgiving, untouchable, not just a god or a man—but a trophy at last.
Biyu puts Harrison in his place lmaoo:
By the time they cab to the club, Harrison’s so high he can nearly taste the neon lights. As they slot through the front door with other partygoers like flocking geese, he blinks at the rush of it all—the women comparing press-on nails by the coat-check, the men wearing vinyl and leather and glitter, drenched in cologne and sweat.
“You’re late,” comes a voice which should be familiar to Harrison, but under the thump of bodies, sounds as generic as a bag of baby carrots.
“Fashionably late,” says Jeremiah, his arm slung around Harrison’s furred shoulders. He pulls him close, toward the person, the woman, smells like sea salt, iron, a new set of rings flaring in the blue spotlights. “You remember Harrison?”
As if on cue, Harrison lifts his eyes to Biyu’s, Jeremiah’s friend from the restaurant. Tonight, she wears a gold cowlneck dress, her lipstick the colour of rust. And something’s different about her hair—the sides of her bob shaved, which is more of a relief than he’d like to admit. She’d looked alarmingly like Reeve when they’d met, moved like her, sounded like her. Maybe he’s too high to see it now, but what does it matter—a win is a win.
Harrison tips his hat, already searching for the bar.
“The quiet one,” Biyu says.
His eyes snap back to her. Her pupils are large disks, and if he squints, almost look like they’re pulsating. “What?”
“You were quiet,” she repeats.
Don't Cha!! ft. this:
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Harrison dances because he knows exactly how to. To thready vocals, he lulls his arms through the air, drags his palm down Jeremiah’s chest when an electro version of Like a Virgin comes on. On the lighted dance floor he’s nothing but rattling limbs, inelegant turns, raunchy dips. Shifting atop his head: the cowboy hat. In his hand: a vodka soda topped with a maraschino cherry. Through half of Don’t Cha, he holds the red cocktail sword between his teeth like it’s a rose, nudges it against Jeremiah’s lip as they kiss, break apart, kiss again.
“Do you think I’m quiet?” he asks between a spin, his head unspooling like a cylinder of thread. The clang of drums spikes up his throat—soon, he’ll need a refill on the drink. More weed. A crucifix to snap.
Jeremiah twirls under Harrison’s arm, a magnetic man in his tourmaline glister. He could follow any man in this club home tonight with his silver nails, his exposed collarbone. “Kiss me again,” he says, sweating, his fingers hard around Harrison’s shoulders—half from his grip, half from his rings.
Jeremiah is really too patient:
This is what he needs, a consideration of fruit and the man in front of him, all svelte limbs, acidic mouth, sharp eyeliner. As he ducks to In Da Club and shimmies to Waiting for Tonight, he digs a palm into Jeremiah’s cheek—he’s solid like limestone, burnished as bronze, his eyes amber portals like a patch of quicksand.
“Did you tell Biyu about me?” Harrison asks. His head pounds, the music too loud, swelling in his ears like an inflating airbag. He should go back to the bar now. They’ve got whiskey sours, gibsons, margaritas. If he flutters his eyelashes long enough at the bartender, maybe he’ll get a little more than a free drink—that’s fine too. Kelly Clarkson sings about praying, breaking, and he could do both in the hands of someone who smells like blood oranges, tastes like Bible paper, stares like Jesus the moment before he performs a miracle, couldn’t he?
“Focus on me,” Jeremiah says, guiding Harrison closer by the hips, so confident as his wooden Mary bracelet jolts with the movement because he’s here in this blinking room, dancing because he’s twenty-one just like Harrison, because he’s electric, alive, because he’s blinding like noonday sun, steady as a fountain cycling the same water over and over, because he’s unashamed in this brisk light, shocking like the zip of battery acid on a tongue. He doesn’t need to try, melds into the bleating crowd like he’s part of it, and he is. He smells like pomegranates, tastes like cherries the next time Harrison kisses him—Chapstick? Cocktail?—and tomorrow, he’ll rise early for a shift at Greta, slip on his navy uniform polo, his makeup untouched despite everything Harrison will do to him tonight because he’s faultless, not quiet, hair precariously puffed, nails buffed to a glassy sheen. He and Biyu might catch breakfast at dawn, bond over their glittery eyelids, their intrinsic closeness, wonder over poached eggs if he’s worth it—graceless Harrison in this cowboy hat and smudged makeup, his jacket cuffs soaked with vodka soda, his head lolling to the insistent voice of Justin Timberlake.
“Biyu thinks I’m quiet,” Harrison says, knocking back the rest of his drink, his neck cracking. He wants to scratch off his face, replace it with someone else’s. “You think I’m meek. So what is it? Do I need to get a tattoo or something?”
Jeremiah glances around the club, his irises starred by a spotlight. What does he see when he looks out at the crowd? Perhaps he recognizes half of these people—from the way he ordered at the bar to the way he slunk so easily onto the dance floor, Harrison assumes he’s been here before. And maybe it’s not just that he recognizes everyone else on the floor, but that they recognize him in return.
Cont'd but with a lot more mouths:
“Did you hear what I said?” Harrison asks.
Jeremiah’s eyes snap back to his, except there’s something hazy there, something tired. “What would a tattoo do for you?”
“I don’t know. Edge? I just think I could—”
And then Jeremiah’s turned away again, right into the arms of someone else—a tanned man with a dense mustache and olive eyes, the man going, “It’s been too long,” and Jeremiah going “It’s been too long,” their grins calcium white, flashing in Harrison’s face. He throws a hand up to his eyes, squints when a second later, the man pulls a woman toward Jeremiah, her hair cropped low and cotton candy pink. She kisses his cheek, says he looks ravishing, he looks like a comet on its way to ignite planet earth, and they’re all holding each other now, friends bopping to Gwen Stefani, admiring each other’s bracelets, thumbs, friends curving toward each other’s ears, kissing each other’s cheeks, each other’s mouths.
Harrison blinks because how many hands do they have now? Every second they seem to multiply—pink hair girl with four, Jeremiah with six. One’s tongue the other’s. Their fingertips fusing. The club fritzes around them like it’s confetti, the lights rippling into a Christmas bow and now there’s a redheaded man running his nose along Jeremiah’s neck, down Jeremiah’s shoulder, wrist, hand. Harrison had just done that back in his apartment, pinned chest-to-chest against him like a monarch fastened to a spreading board, and here Jeremiah is now, enmeshed in touch, in adoration because he should be adored—the men congregating around him now have their priorities straight. If they all got on their knees at Jeremiah’s feet, Harrison would understand. They aren’t exclusive, don’t even know each other’s last names, and besides, how can Jeremiah help how everyone magnetizes around him? Harrison can’t blame them. Jeremiah is illusory under the disco ball’s speckled light, his throat long, biteable, his eyes syrupy in his high. A woman takes him by the shoulder, but not just any woman—Biyu, and her eyes are pinched, analyzing, because she’s looking at Harrison, her glossy crimson nails on Jeremiah’s cheek, and she’s kissing him too now, her body joining the cluster, and it’s good, the way they all roll limbs to synth, the way they turn into each other’s faces and kiss, kiss, kiss. The music clangs, their mouths full of spit. The DJ says to hold your partners close, and they don’t have to. They are not simply together, not simply in chrysalis, but osmosed in their becoming.
Cont'd (GIANT sentence - CW: self harm)
A hand on Harrison’s elbow. He flinches and is surprised to see it’s Jeremiah who’s touched him. How did he get here so fast? Harrison expects a trail of blurry bodies to follow him, but where did everyone go? They’ve dashed from the club like embers scattering from a dulled fire, nowhere to be seen but dangerous anyway and weren’t they all just over there, under there, and are they lonely on the ceiling and how do they plan to get down and is it too loud in here and why is no one using their indoor voices and should he cover his ears and where is his mother now and how did Mary say I love you and did she ever dream of fleeing to Hollywood or speeding down the I-40 or telling Gabriel no and why does everyone worship a god who demands and calls it creation and what’s his name again—Harrison?—and when did his hands sprout from child to whatever he is now and should he dye his hair red, cut his wrists again and is it possible to be young and happy about it and is he still dancing, he’s still dancing, dancing, dancing, dancing, and someone’s complimenting his silver eyelids and would he like them to touch him gently and is it hot in here to anyone else and does he taste blood or the ocean and is this what it feels like to die in holy light and Jeremiah’s right in front of him, unkissed, still as dark water, as Lonan in the night, and now he’s holding Harrison’s face, his rings cool against his skin, and he’s kissing him too, tastes like spearmint and chocolate lip gloss, rum and Coke, rusted metal—the mouths of everyone in this room and this isn’t so bad, how their bodies net into each other, how in one breath, Harrison’s teeth clack against Jeremiah’s, and in the next, clack against another man’s and then another’s, his stubble rough, mouth sour, a chandelier earring flailing against his cheek, and then through his ear, his hands wound into cinnamon hair and he could be kissing himself and maybe he is and doesn’t he want that, the floor gelid, the music like cotton wool, their pelvises threaded, the walls caving, their mouths locked, the floor lava, the room too bright, his headache like an earthquake, two pairs of hands rattling to the beat of this bursting room one moment, then clutched together as they follow each other to a dim bathroom.
This section was inspired by @dallonwrites' lyrics in narrative post!!! also soft Felix cameo <3
The room is electric purple, smells like grapes, sweat, flexes under Harrison’s shoes like a sandcastle collapsing, like a sinkhole swallowing a house. Bodies weave across the floor, someone lighting a joint in the corner, someone reciting Sylvia Plath into a paper bag, going, the happening of this happening, going, the earth turns now.
Harrison’s head pounds—he should’ve brought a blister pack of acetaminophen because at least then he’d have something to punch, or he should’ve punched out his own eye by now, disappeared with another man who isn’t Jeremiah and didn’t he try, and where is the man with cinnamon hair now? Harrison turns to look for him, but the room ripples with his movement, shirring in staccato clacks around him like a shaken rice maraca. He’d hoped he’d write his number on a man’s wrist tonight even though he doesn’t have a cell phone—he’d hoped he’d go home with someone who shouts the lyrics to Madonna’s Everybody in twilight’s stillness, a man who’d let the DJ shake him, a man who’d let the music take him. And he could do all of that with Jeremiah—Jeremiah who probably did those things at the party Harrison wasn’t invited to, Jeremiah who knows how to pass off frozen spanakopita as homemade because he’s a good host, Jeremiah who knows how to kick people out of his apartment with kindness, Jeremiah who’s built to be kissed, to be loved. And where is he now? In the artificial light, Harrison hunts for him too—but he’s not in the unhinging bathroom stalls, not in the teal grout, the running sinks, and maybe he never existed at all, missing like Jesus in the tomb—body gone, body gone, body gone.
Cont'd BODY BACK BODY BACK BODY BACK:
Harrison rubs his eyes. His ears still ring from the clatter outside, and he stands at the bathroom’s entrance like a child who’s lost his mother in the mall. Should he sit down? A group of girls form a ring on the floor, chant about Leos, Britney, men. Someone shuffles in past him, knocks into his shoulder by accident, apologizes over and over, their hands clutched against his face—I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.
He yanks away. Don’t touch me, he wants to say, I don’t want to be touched ever again, but by the time he’s located his mouth, his eyes pulsing to a hi-hat, his nose burning on a cloud of cherry smoke, the person’s gone too. He presses his fingers to his eyes, wishes for a soft bed, a place to land, but then he’s rocking forward, right into someone else.
At first, they just stare at each other. The man’s got the same look in his eye—something gilt, something feral, an identical fear in his mouth. Harrison blinks hard, and the man does too—not a man, actually, but his own reflection.
He approaches the mirror, jolts at the way he touches himself—more carefully than he’s ever been touched before. Who are you? he wants to say. He’d like to leave this place now, the club, Las Vegas, the earth. He’d like to buy himself a pet tarantula, run off a cliffside, eat a tub of ice cream with his bare hands. Why did he come here again? His mind is so quiet. This could be peace. But who is he? In Jeremiah’s bathroom he knew, but now there’s this stranger ahead of him, the person who must be him—someone’s chandelier earring grazing his jaw, the cowboy hat lopsided, mascara running down his cheeks even though he hasn’t cried. Where did you go? he mouths, but he knows. He’s disappeared also like Jesus in the tomb, his limbs vanishing one by one, his skin melting off his hands—body gone, body gone, body gone. He grabs his cheeks, panicked because he’s on fire, gold tossed into the crucible. He’s going to burn to ash. He’s going to need a burial soon. His face has been stolen, his breastbone and knuckles too. A month ago, someone spat him into a basket like his body was ripe for the offertory—body gone, body gone, body gone.
“Back,” Harrison says, nose grazing the spattered mirror. His chest swells, and maybe he is burning, and maybe he’s right here, hidden somewhere in the pinprick of his reflection. “Back,” he repeats. He isn’t thoughtful. He isn’t profound. Maybe that’s fine. He squeezes his tear-duct, sticks out his tongue. He’ll die eventually, let his body disappear, but not right now. “Body back, body back, body back.”
Cont'd ft. Harry-something (CW: mild violence):
“I know you.”
Harrison whips around. In front of him stands a redheaded man—the same redhead who’d held Jeremiah close on the dance floor, trailed his oily nose along his neck. He wears a pair of browline sunglasses, a black vinyl vest draped with silver chains. He holds a clove, its smoke clouding the ruby pinging off his ring finger, his mouth ghosted with what looks like red lipstick.
“What?” Harrison says, jumping when the bathroom door clangs open and in come two more women. He lifts his fingers to his mouth, pulls up a hangnail until it stings.
“I saw you out there,” says the man, taking a puff of his cigarette. “Harry-something?” He looks like a scarlet ibis, strangely translucent. “JJ’s friend.”
Harrison digs his fingertips into his eye socket. His head feels like it’s been cleaved with an axe. “Harrison.”
Redhead smiles, blows smoke into Harrison’s face. “What’d you say?”
“My name is Harrison.”
“I’m Perry,” he says, and Harrison wouldn’t give a fuck if his name was Matt Dillon or Rob Lowe or Nash Baker because he’s blowing smoke into his face again, his clove flailing like a dislocated finger. He gestures to Harrison’s outfit, nodding. “You’re like a one man show.”
Harrison covers his eyes. Maybe he can find a dark hole in this club to dive into, somewhere no one will find him again. “What does that mean?”
Perry’s smile falters momentarily, but then it’s back, all teeth, no lips. “You’ve got this flair. You ever been told that? Weird, but good, it’s—”
The second he purses his lips to blow out more smoke, Harrison grabs him by the throat, pulls him so close he can see a constellation of blackheads on his chin, feel his heart hammering.
Perry yelps, nearly losing his hold on the clove altogether.
Harrison arcs his jaw around his ear. He smells like orchids, freshwater. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Cont'd - Harrison is weird :)
Perry laughs, the sound strangled beneath Harrison’s grip. Smoke fumbles out of his mouth like worms. He really does look like a bird, which in this case, isn’t a good thing. “Noted.”
“Do you want to kiss me?”
“You have a hand around my throat.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Well, I'll leave it there lmao!!! Sorry I subjected you to this man, but hope you enjoyed this gigantic update!
FIN. MAGNUM OPUS COMPLETE!
See you soon!
Rachel
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miniscule-meow · 2 years ago
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Isabell and the Lads: Unfortunate First Meeting (5)
Word Count: ~1.8k
Masterpost
First Part | Last Part | Next Part
“Hey.” The word rumbles around her, dragging her from her sleep. His fingertip nudges lightly against her shoulder. She lets out a small yelp as her eyes shoot open. It is darker in the room than it was before. A small light illuminates from the living room, silhouetting the gargantuan being before her. His hand is far too close, one fingertip still resting against her shoulder. He’s leaned in to look at her, she can see his smile glint in the darkness. Maybe it would have been reassuring if he was properly lit, or if they were the same size. But as it stands, his shadow is stretched over her, covering her completely. It feels quite menacing. She painfully pushes herself to a sitting position and shoves herself back, trying to create some more space between herself and the human looming over her. What a wakeup call. She groans, immediately wincing at the movement. She feels absolutely wretched. Her body is sore and aching, she feels stale from crying and her head rings with a dull pulse left over from the alcohol.
“Hey, you’re okay.” He says softly, “I’ve got you, it’s okay.” His hand slides forward again, finding it’s way behind her. His warm fingers press into her back, offering- no, insisting their support. She cringes away from them. Marcus is obviously ignorant to the fact that he is exactly her problem. “You were asleep for a couple hours. Zeke went to bed, and I’m here to watch over you. I figured you could use something more comfortable than a paper towel to sleep on, so…” he draws out the word as he produces a shoe box, setting it on the counter next to her. “I put this together for you. I think you’re gonna like it.”
The hand that rests against her back shifts. His thumb snakes around to her front, gently pinching her in his grasp. His other fingers curl in around her, offering their support. Her heart hammers in her chest, she can’t breathe. His fingers aren’t squeezing the air out of her, it’s her own anxiety doing that. Though, his fingers do press into the myriad of bruises decorating her ribs. She cries out in a mixture of alarm, discomfort, and panic. “Relax, I’ve got you.” Against her will, her body lifts from the counter, and she is placed inside the box. “There.” He withdraws his hand. “Nice right? It’s like your own little bedroom.” He grins at his cleverness, wanting her to be pleased. Her head whips around seeing no doors, only walls.
“L-let me out.” She turns up to face him, wide eyed.
“Listen, Zeke is already asleep, and I have to go to bed soon too. I don’t want you running off and hurting yourself in the middle of the night when neither of us are awake to help you. Okay?”
“Let. Me. Out!” She shouts up at him, more insistently this time. Her voice is tight with panic.
“In the morning.” He says again, she gets the feeling that he's not going to budge on this. “Get some rest, okay?” With that, he disappears from her sky, leaving her to helplessly look around her cardboard prison.
There’s a bottle cap of water, and a folded up paper towel with some fruit on it that captures her interest. In the other corner of the box there’s a plush rectangle with some squares of fabric draped over it. A bed. Or at least, an attempt at a bed.
Isabell makes a b-line for the food first. Part of her thinks that it might be a bad idea to trust food given to her by a human, but it’s just a passing thought. She is so hungry, and it all looks so perfect. If somehow this food is going to kill her, at least she will die happy.
She hasn’t been able to get her hands on fresh fruit in a very long time. And when she was able to get it, it was typically just a small crushed berry. But now she has apple slices, and banana slices, strawberries, and blue berries.
She feels better once she’s eaten her fill. She carefully wraps a small chunk of apple up in some of the paper towel it was sitting on and stows it away in her pack. For later, because she is getting out of here and she might not ever get to have apples again. Hopefully she can make it home before it gets too mushy. Though, things aren’t looking good for her considering they put her in a box.
She moves awkwardly with the bandage on her leg, limping over to the wall. If she had any of her climbing equipment on her she might have been able to scale it. But without it, she is trapped. She goes over and flops into the bed. It’s soft, she’ll give it that. Though she feels just as tired, it takes longer for her to fall asleep this time. Her mind just keeps spinning, trying to form a plan. But she’s too tired, and everything seems too helpless. She drifts off into an uneasy sleep.
She wakes up several times. Eventually, the light in the room has shifted enough that she figures it’s almost morning. When she moves, she feels like death warmed over. She wants to just drift back to sleep until the humans get up and decide what to do with her. But that feels too much like giving up. She’s not about to ride the slippery slope from shoe box to proper cage. She forces herself to get up, and look around again for anything she can use for an escape.
The base of the bed was a sponge, wrapped in cloth. With great effort she shoves the blankets off and stands the sponge-mattress up against the wall. It isn’t quite tall enough. She tosses the water out of the bottle cap, after greedily drinking from it one last time. Then she uses the cap as a final step on top of her makeshift staircase. Stepping back, she admires her handywork.
It is... precarious to say the least. If she wasn’t injured, she might be less weary. But she’s been left with little choice. Her legs shake as she pulls herself over the side of the box. She takes extra care in making sure that she lands only on her good leg when she drops down to the counter below.
Now she just has to get down. She frowns, looking over the edge of the counter and seeing the long drop to the floor. She looks across the counter for anything that might be helpful, and she sees her rope! One of the humans took it down from the cabinet, but left it on the counter in a heap. She’s saved!
She begins the long and arduous process of scaling down to the floor. It’s a familiar journey, it just takes more than twice as long to complete. She can’t afford to burst a stitch here. She picks her way to the floor, being as slow and methodical as possible.
Once she gets to the bottom, she pulls the release on her knot, and it falls down to her. She coils it and attaches it back to its rightful spot on her pack. She just has to get across the apartment, under the entertainment stand and through the baseboard to get home. Her heart soars, but she doesn’t let herself celebrate for too long, that’s still a lot she needs to accomplish. She walks through the kitchen, hugging the wall just to be safe.
The kitchen opens up into the living room. The door to the apartment is to her right, there’s a hallway to her left. She’ll have to cut across the gap in the hall, but then she can hug the wall the rest of the way to freedom. Marcus is out in the living room, asleep on the couch with a controller in his hand. Whatever game he was playing is paused on the screen. This is just too easy.
Until it isn’t. She swears she hears fate itself laughing at her as a door down the hallway opens, then shuts, the other human stepping out into the hall. Zeke is awake.
She slams herself against the baseboard, hoping that the overhang of the cabinet is enough to obscure her from his view. Maybe he won’t even look down here. She feels like she jinxed herself as soon as she thinks that. The human pauses next to her, his socked feet falling still, close enough she could lean out and touch him. Thankfully, he doesn’t catch her, he looks over to his sleeping roommate.
“Marcus.” He pauses, no response. Zeke sighs and walks over to the couch, nudging him awake. “Marcus.” He repeats.
“Ah- What?” He mumbles groggily, screwing up his face, blinking at the dim light of sunrise hitting his eyes.
“Where’s Isabell. You said you’d keep an eye on her.”
“I am, I am.” He insists groggily.
“You were obviously sleeping," Zeke retorts, unamused.
“No, I know. She’s in the box on the counter.” He slurs through his words, falling back asleep as he speaks them.
“You put her in a box?! Damnit Marcus.” Zeke huffs, sounding incredibly frustrated. Marcus jolts at his tone, rubbing his face in an attempt to wake himself up.
“What? I wanted to keep her safe while we were both sleeping. You would have done the same thing.” He says, defensively.
“No. I really wouldn’t have.” Zeke’s footsteps thunder past her as he quickly steps across the room. Alarms go off in her mind.
Things are much more complicated now. Marcus gets up and goes to mess with the game systems in the entertainment stand. He’s crouching right over where she needs to go for her escape. But more alarmingly, Zeke is checking the box that she has notably, escaped from.
“Shit.” He says quietly. “Marcus, your stupid plan didn’t even work.” He grumbles, looking back to his friend.
“What?”
“She’s gone.” He says simply.
“What?!” Marcus repeats obviously flustered, leaping to his feet.
“Stop! Marcus don’t move.” Zeke raises his voice, freezing Marcus in his tracks. She gets the impression that that isn’t something he does a lot. “Listen to me. Be. Very. Careful. Watch where you walk, okay?”
“What do you think I would-” Marcus begins, but Zeke must have flashed him a pretty severe look, because he stops. “Never mind. Uh. I’ll just… I’ll just stay here.” He carefully settles back down onto the floor. Placing himself unmoving right in front of where she needs to go. Damn it. “She probably didn’t get far, right? She might be on the counter still. I don’t know how she could have gotten down. Check behind stuff, maybe?” Marcus rambles, trying to be helpful.
“Thank you. Marcus.” Zeke says in a short clip. Obviously annoyed by Marcus’s chatter. Marcus takes the hint and shuts up. Zeke carefully beings picking through the countertop.
“Isabell.” He calls her name gently, sending eerie chills down her spine. “Please don’t hide. It’s a lot safer if we can see you.”
This is as good of a window she’s going to get. He’ll turn his attention to the floor when he’s done with his search of the counter. She has to get moving. Small bump in the plan, not a big deal, she tells herself. She’ll just have to take a detour.
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snowe-zolynn-rogers · 10 months ago
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Thank god I haven’t revealed Kill Lunar KC’s name besides being Kill Code/KC yet, because I’m thinking of changing it from the one I originally intended.
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